I'm pretty busy this period in writing the O'Reilly AIR Cookbook. Unfortunately the book won't be out for this summer but if you want to learn how to create cool desktop application with AIR using Flash, the well known David Tucker (the main author of the AIR Cookbook) has released a video coruse for Lynda.com site:

Rich internet applications become more popular and powerful every year, but they have been limited to what can be done from within a web browser. Adobe AIR allows web developers to leverage their Flash, Flex, HTML, and AJAX skills to create multi-platform desktop applications. In AIR for Flash Developers, David Tucker uses Flash CS3 Professional to create several AIR applications, exploring the workflow and features of the AIR extension and runtime along the way. He discusses how to integrate with an operating system; how to incorporate HTML and PDFs; how to use the local SQLite database for information; how to package, distribute, and update AIR applications; and much more. Example files accompany the course.

I know David and I'm sure he made a wonderful job. Moreover on Lynda.com site there are two more AIR courses by David Gassner that worths:

AIR for Flex Developers with: David Gassner

AIR for Flex Developers is David Gassner's follow-up to his AIR Essential Training course, and takes a deeper look at how Flex Builder 3 and the Flex 3 framework can be used to build cross-system desktop applications with Adobe AIR. David examines every point of integration with the host operating system, including working with the local file system, creating and maintaining local databases, and managing native windows and menus. He also shares tips for how to configure the development environment, and how to publish and update finished AIR applications. Example files accompany the course.

AIR Essential Training 4.25 with: David Gassner

In AIR Essential Training, instructor David Gassner shows how to use the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and associated development tools to create dynamic applications. David demonstrates how to build and deploy desktop applications that run equally well on Windows and Mac OS X. He covers creating applications in Flex Builder 3, Dreamweaver CS3, and Flash CS3; working with HTML and PDF documents; creating a seamless installation experience; and more. Exercise files accompany the course.

Learn Flex in one week by going through this video training course. To maximize your learning, we recommend that you view the videos and complete the exercises in the order that they are listed. If you run into problems and have questions, you can ask a question on the Flex in a Week forum.

Topics divided into 5 days cover the following aspects of the framework:

I'm just back from my holidays (two awesome days spent at the Seychelles islands) and I've found the great news about the announcements of Flex 4 SDK and Thermo at MAX Conference 2008 (from Matt Chotin blog):

The Flex development team has been very busy lately and last night they posted a ton of code and documentation
on the next version of the Flex framework codenamed "Gumbo". "Gumbo" is
the framework that will enable much richer application UI and break
free of the more rigid look and feel of todays Flex applications. It is
also the framework that will be powering applications made with "Thermo".

I read that the Flex Builder 4 and the Flex 4 SDK are planned for the
second half of 2009 but a nightly Flex 4 public alpha can be downloaded.

Flex SEO Contest
But what I’m most worried about is how we can expose valuable data from
Flex (and Flash) to search engines in a way that makes the user
experience better. So I’m starting a contest in the hopes that the
community can learn the best way to expose data from a Flex application
to search engines.

Rules
I’ve come up with a phrase: “Fleximagically Searchable” which currently has absolutely no results on Google. In two months, whichever Flex application is number one in the search results wins. Here are the rules:

It has to be a Flex application

“Fleximagically Searchable” must be dynamically loaded. It can’t be
static text inside of your application. - But I don’t care how you load
it, in fact that might make a difference in how Google ranks you.

The first link must be deep linked directly into where you load
“Fleximagically Searchable” into your application. Feel free to use any
deep linking methods out there.

Nothing in your code can dynamically load the phrase automatically. It has to be the result of a user interaction.

You must provide source code and be willing to talk about exactly what you did.

The path to get the Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) certification was a long process but now I'm done.Now I'm an official Flex 3 Certified Instructor, so I can start to teach Adobe Flex Official Training courses:

One of my favourite AIR features is the support of creating local database file using SQLite embedded engine. If you have SQL skills it'll be easy to storing persistent local data to your desktop application. You can use this feature to store application data, favourite users' configuration options, document-oriented application, to cache data and synch it with the network.Creating a SQLite database in AIR is pretty simple:

If everything is ok the AIR SQLite database is created and opened. Now you're ready to create tables and populate it.But a cool thing about the open() or the asyncronous method openAsync() is that you can create an in-memory database passing a null value to the first parameter of these methods. It means that the database is created not in a database file on disk but it's a temporary database reference. The openAsync() method (as well as the opee()) has the following syntax:

where the reference parameter is an Object that specifies the location of the database file that is opened. If you set it to null you'll create an in-memory database:

// actionScript

private var _dbConn:SQLConnection(); = new SQLConnection();

_dbConn.openAsync(null);

//JavaScript

var dbConn = new air.SQLConnection();dbConn.openAsync(null);

So you can now create your SQL statements,
define mechanism for executing multiple statements in a transaction, use the begin(),
commit(), and rollback() methods without having a local file. At the end of your operations you'll decide if storing the database on the local client or sending it to your remote server !

I was considering going myself at FlashOnTheBeach 2008, but now that they took me as a speaker I have no choice.I was an attendace of the first edition of the conference and I missed the two others. So I'm glad to be part of this awesome event.

Comtaste Training is proud to announce its new training course about Flex 3 development using BlazeDS. The course is the result of several enquiries made by our clients about those topics.I've worked on the outline of the course and it's ready and I've just published it on the italian section of Comtaste's site (I'm working on the english outline for this training course):

BlazeDS is the open source technology released by
Adobe and based on Java Remoting and web messaging. BlazeDS allows
developers to easily connect to J2EE distribuite (Java
Enterprise)architecture and to carry out real time data pushing to Rich
Internet Applications created with Flex 3 or to desktop applications
created with Adobe AIR. BlazeDS uses AMF format to transfer data in
binary mode, a technique that increases the performance of the
application compared to XML or SOAP formats. In this course we will
illustrate the techniques to install, configure and connect Flex and
AIR applications to BlazeDS in Java server logic, and how to exploit
the characteristics of this technology.

Training objectivesThe
final laboratory of this course will allow participants to built
complex and interactive Enterprise applications distributed in Java
Enterprise JEE architectures.

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash
files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained
Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing
algorithm by integrating Adobe's
Flash Player technology.

In the past, web designers faced challenges
if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was
not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that
their content was also presented in another way that search engines could
find.

Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers
can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can
expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster
Central blog about the Searchable
SWF integration.